GAY, LESBIAN COMMUNITY CELEBRATES

The rainbow flag fluttered high above the festive marchers, people from a variety of races and ethnic backgrounds who convened on Sunday for the annual Gay and Lesbian Pride in Diversity celebration in West Palm Beach.

"We are their sons and daughters. We are part of the composite of the family," said Norman Aaron, president of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council Inc., a private, nonprofit organzation. "Events like this serve mainly as an education about the gay community."

Aaron, 76, will be among those chosen to pass the Olympic torch when it comes to Boynton Beach next month.

On Sunday, Aaron joined hundreds of gay and lesbian revelers on the lawn at Datura and Flagler avenues before the festival was cut short by the afternoon storm.

But the weather did not dampen spirits.

"It's a day to come out and have a unity in the community," said event chairman Andy Amoroso, a businessman in West Palm Beach. "We have churches, parents, and friends of gays and lesbians participating."

A marching band led the parade through downtown West Palm Beach around noon. They donned T-shirts that read "Hate Is Not a Family Value," and a marcher touted a safe sex message in dramatic costume.

"I like drama. It gets people's attention," said Terrance Allen of West Palm Beach, who donned a plastic gown adorned with sequined condoms. "A lot more people are serious about AIDS. It's hitting closer to home for a lot of us."

June is national gay pride month, marking the 1969 Stonewall Inn uprising in New York's Greenwich Village when a clash between police and patrons of the gay bar, who resisted a raid on the establishment, sparked several days of riots.

The incident was cited as the beginning of the gay-rights movement.

Since the Stonewall incident, members of the gay and lesbian community said that there is greater understanding in the 1990s, even in the face of a conservative backlash.

"Attitudes are definitely changing," said Sergio Palacio, co-chairman of an AIDS committee that will be bringing the national AIDS Memorial Quilt to Florida Atlantic University next year. "In higher education, you find a high degree of tolerance for gays and lesbians - enlightenment."

Gay civic activists pointed to the political gains made in West Palm Beach. For example, local ordinances prohibit employment and housing discrimination.

The West Palm Beach Human Rights Council was successful recently in getting a conviction in the fatal shooting of a gay man. The group fought to get the crime classified as a hate crime.

But there is still more work to be done in order to get the employment protections at the county level, leaders said. And they expect a national push for legalizing same-sex marriages and adoption to continue to be politically charged issues.

"It's gradually moving toward a greater understanding of human rights," said Robert Hardy, co-president of the Atlantic Coast Democratic Club.

Berta Wesler, a member of the Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, an advocacy group, agreed.

"Like most parents, I was very upset when my daughter came out," Wesler said. "But basically, it was fear of society's reaction, worrying about her well-being. But we're past that.

"Now it's time to educate other people. They [gays) are not out to influence anybody. They want the right to live their own lives."

The event's proceeds will be donated to support Compass, a counseling and community center for gays and lesbians, in downtown West Palm Beach.